Summary
Vladimir Putin ordered the conscription of 160,000 men—the largest draft since 2011—despite ongoing U.S.-mediated ceasefire talks with Ukraine.
The move raises doubts about Russia’s commitment to diplomacy, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of using talks to buy time for battlefield gains in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine claims Russia intends to escalate the war, citing forced contracts for conscripts. Losses remain high on both sides, with Russia reportedly losing over 100,000 troops in 2024 alone.
Guys, I’m not totally sure about this, but just maybe this guy isn’t really interested in peace.
But who’s gonna polish all the equipment while they’re at pace?
I hear Donald Trump is good at polishing Russian equipment.
And what are they gonna do with all the meat grinders that they bought? They won’t give it for free to random families.
More meat for the meat grinder. And unlike Ukrainians Russia does have a choice to stop the war - all they need to do is stop and leave.
Ukrainians die to protect their homeland against invasion. Russians die for needless oligarchic aspirations of dominion of the elite. It’s not the same thing for either side, as many like to make it seem as if Ukraine has any responsibility in the matter.
Any loss of life on Russia’s side is completely optional, and due to Putin’s whims. Not that it matters to the vultures surrounding Ukraine.
Not to justify it, but at this point Putin has maneuvered himself and Russia’s economy into a situation where if the war stops and another doesn’t start, the Russian economy will collapse and Putin will most likely end up dead. He made himself quite powerless in a way.
Between Zelensky publicly stating Putin has health issues and will die soon, and the recent incident with Putin’s limousine, he may not have a whole lot longer in any event. One can only hope…
Ukrainians die to protect their homeland against invasion. Russians die for needless oligarchic aspirations of dominion of the elite. It’s not the same thing for either side, as many like to make it seem as if Ukraine has any responsibility in the matter.
I think what some people are arguing about is that ukraine government practices much resemble these of the russian government. Ukraine government is also drafting people by force and arresting any male between 18-60 who tries to leave the border. Many people died as a result trying to flee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_conscription_crisis#Border_crossings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXhC8WREVKM
Drafting people by force is a needless authoritarian practice in any scenario.
This isn’t for Ukraine.
This is for Europe.
I predict an uptick of Rafale, EF2000, and JAS-39 sales in Europe, and that the models offered will be wired for nuclear delivery should the need arise.
I feel awful that our government is breaking bad over on this side of the pond… but at the same time, I think open violent revolt and civil war would be a believable scenario if orangeboi actually tries to Molotov-Ribbentrop all of fucking Europe with Putin. So I don’t think he’s gonna actually try that.
He 100% will or has done that, remember the secret protocol was secret.
The other shoe always drops later.
160K isn’t gonna cut that though. He’ll need several hundred K more if he realistically wants to actually have any gains at all.
I think Vladdy knows that the threat of war is much more of a nuisance to Europe than actually fighting and losing soldiers. This is just for threat posturing at borders.
The real war is being fought with unmarked soldiers, unsuspicious russian cargo vessels, heavily propagandising one country (Hungary), while leaving others virtually alone (France) to saw division, etc.
Nobody wins a war from the west. They know they have to go asymmetric, and they are, and the longer it takes Europe to realise that, the longer they will suffer. They also know wars are over 50% psychological.
while leaving others virtually alone (France)
You realize Orbán has been bankrolling Le Pen pretty hard, right?
Yep, but see what happened this week? France is a stupid country to try and get on your side from Russian perspective. They will always get drunk, revolt and then do a threesome with your women after they’re finished chopping the head off the invaders.
ooooo those French! ;)
🇫🇷
Vive la Republique 🇫🇷
Yeah, but Le Pen’s party is still going strong. I wouldn’t call it a win yet.
Maybe, maybe not. Either way Europe should be well prepared in case it is.
Attacking Europe with conscripts and depleted hardware storage? I can’t see how that could fail.
They’re Russian, stop trying to bring reason into it.
I’m sure they genuinely think that now the US will attack Europe and they can invade on 2 fronts.
Russians are just insane morons.
They’re Russian, stop trying to bring reason into it.
Oh, absolutely. However, insanity can help only that much with invasion.
I’m sure they genuinely think that now the US will attack Europe and they can invade on 2 fronts.
Red, white and bluelandia wants a word with you. Do you really think it’s impossible? At this point I’m not that sure anymore.
Russians are just insane morons.
I’d disagree to some extent. Call Putin what you want (and rightly so), but he is not a moron (as opposite to the Orange one). The common people is that or just don’t have a choice.
Putin was brilliant, his moves until 2008 were a perfection of geopolitical chess.
After that he completely lost the plot, his terror at the rise of China completely broke his mind, he felt he had to show strength less Russia become a vassal state and resource depot for the CPC.
And he wasn’t wrong, but his response was stupid, and relied on Europe continuing to follow Merkel’s ‘nice doggy’ policies.
Now he thinks he can act anyway, because his sponsored right-wing groups will cause enough dissent that nobody will stop him from taking the baltics.
Poppycock. Russia would never invade the EU or a NATO member, I don’t know why people always raise this silly idea. For starters there’s no gain, for seconds they’d get their ass handed to them.
They aren’t rational, otherwise they would have waited to invade Ukraine till 2024 while cashing fuel checks.
Well he’s got a puppet running the US so, why not.
It doesn’t say what region the draftees will be coming from.
There’s a fair chance they won’t be coming from Moscow.
Like, 100%.
Yeah, but how many 18-40 year old men are still in rural Russia that haven’t already been fed to the meat grinder or were lucky enough to get out of the country first?
Sooner or later these conscriptions are going to hit bigger cities, although they’ll likely be used to backfill non-combat positions while others are sent to Ukraine. But even that can go on for only so long…
In other news, Russian mail order brides increasing?
RIP Russian demographics
And also RIP Ukrainian demographics. It’s great to see Russia hurting, and they deserve their scars, but it’s gonna take a very long time for Ukraine to recover too. They’ll have EU support, but EU’s economy probably isn’t gonna be in great shape either. And you can’t buy babies.
Ukraine will likely get assistance from more than just EU countries. And once things are safe again I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ukrainians around the world returning home to help rebuild etc. You can’t say the same of Russia I don’t think.
Ukraine had a very robust economy before the war, exporting everything from food to military hardware. Given what they have learned about UAV’s, etc. in the past 3 years they likely stand to regain a strong military industry once again after this is all settled. They’re already manufacturing some of their own military gear for the war, and once the war is over it should be fairly easy for them to turn all that into an export industry.
One of the reasons russia could invade ukraine is because they have an army of conscripts. Rulers and politicians use people as their paws. Be wary of any ruler or government drafting people by force even when their claim is “defense”, not being drafted by force does not limit the ability of individuals to defend themself.
When that population crashes and burns over the next 50 years it’s gonna be a hell of a thing to hear about
100k loss is a crazy amount of death… Sadly, looking at population numbers, Russia is about 143 million people, so it shouldn’t be as hard as I thought it would be for them to find more people to send to slaughter.
Take a look at their demographics, and add the millions who have fled or died or been so maimed they can’t work and well you’ll see why there is a labour shortage already just to have ordinary things up and running. Now imagine having enough tax revenue to take care for the elderly …
“Mediated” talks
Too bad you can’t just draft military hardware.
